TITE, PALEOLITHIC PERIOD IN SOUTH AMERICA.
One of the most interesting contributions of Arch=logy to American Ethnology is that of the relics of man in South America in very old qua ternary, possibly Interglacial, deposits. This proves that at an extremely remote period our species roamed over large tracts of the Western Hemisphere, extending from the great glacier of the Northern to that of the Antarctic latitudes. We shall briefly present the grounds for this conclusion.
Relics in Pcrn.—From an early date the occurrence of human remains in banks of marine shells now quite above high-water mark attracted the attention of observers, but to this day we have no satisfactory geological reports on the deposits of the Peruvian coast. In the guano deposits of the mainland, and especially in those on the Chincha Islands, articles of human workmanship frequently occur at a depth and in surroundings which show that the whole deposit has been more than once submerged and again elevated since these articles were dropped. That they are art products of man cannot be questioned, as they are small images cut out of gold and silver sheets; and this teaches that in a volcanic country our usual means of estimating the ages of deposits may prove deceptive, for we cannot assign any work in metal to the Palaeolithic Period.
Brazilian earliest investigator of the remains of pre historic man in South America was the Danish physician Dr. Lund. In 1837, in searching the contents of a cave in the province of Minas Geraes, he disinterred the bones of nearly thirty persons, of all ages and both sexes, lying in immediate intermixture with numerous fragments of the skeletons of the lower animals. Of the latter, some were of living species, others of those long since extinct or unknown in the locality, among them the horse and the megatherium. All these osseous remains lay upon the original floor of the cavern, imbedded in a hard clay and covered with an undisturbed stalactitic deposit and fragments of rock which had fallen from the roof of the cavern. The human bones pre sented the same chemical characters and general appearance as the skeletons of the extinct species with which they were associated. They appeared to have all perished together by some unexplained catastrophe. (Comp. pp. 36, 37; also Vol. I. pp. 27, 37.) Pursuing his discovery, Dr. Lund examined several hundred other caverns in the province of Minas Geraes. In a number he was rewarded with the discovery of other deposits of human bones under conditions similar to those mentioned above. From the whole of his researches he established the existence in that locality of forty-four now extinct species, contemporary with all of which some race of men had flourished.
It is not easy to define the precise age of these cave-deposits, but it is evident that they extend far back into the Quaternary or Pleistocene Period. Some would have it that they prove a Tertiary antiquity for man. But there are reasons, especially the climatic characters revealed,
which render this opinion doubtful and needless. There is, however, no good reason for denying that the plains and valleys of Brazil were inhab ited by men in the European Paleolithic Period.
Pampas of the Argentine a large portion of the southern extremity of South America there extend broad, level plains, of a rich soil, covered with strong grass and but few trees. These are the Pampas. Their geological age is not positively decided. Some who have studied them refer them to the Pliocene of the Tertiary; Darwin would make them recent, almost Alluvial; while the majority assign them to the early Quaternary, to a Pleistocene Period, and connect them directly with Antarctic glacial action.
About 1874, M. Ameghino discovered in the earth of which the Pampas consist a number of human bones, pieces of charcoal, worked stone and bone implements, and the bony shafts of skeletons cracked for their marrow, in intimate association with the remains of large extinct animals belonging to either the Pliocene or the Postpliocene Period. The announcement of this discovery, which proved that man had penetrated even to the far southern extremity of the Western World at that remote epoch, was received unwillingly. But other similar finds, in the Argen tine Republic, Patagonia, and Chili, have since come to the support of Ameghino's views, and they may now be regarded as substantiated.
The race whose remains he exhumed were more skilful in working bone than stone, in this respect presenting an analogy to the late Palzeo lithic (Magdalenien) Epoch of France and Belgium. They also con structed cave-like dwellings, digging a cavity in the earth and covering it with the huge shell of a species of glyptodon (G. reliculatus,151. 1, _fig. 33) now extinct. Their work in stone included arrow-points (fig. 23), scrapers (fig. 28), chips (fig. 21), and awls. In bone they manufac tured sundry small implements, as awls, scrapers, etc., and on some broad pieces of this substance numerous transverse scratches appear; but, thus far, no drawings upon or carvings from bones or horns have been reported, such as are frequent in the Madeleine deposits of France.
From these specimens we must place these tribes on a comparatively advanced plane of culture, at about the highest level of palmolithic man.
Iii discoveries similar to those of Ameghino have been reported from time to time from Patagonia. One of the most recent and satisfactory was by the Italian geologist D. Lovisato. In excavating a deposit on the banks of the stream called Talpalmien, near Azul, he disinterred the jawbone of a Texotion burnrcisleri, a species now extinct, and in immediate contiguity to it a fragment of bone which had been dressed by hand. This find, he writes, "places beyond doubt the con temporary existence in this locality of man and these large extinct mammals."